Saturday, December 4, 2010

Rate Your Students, the blog, the experience, closed down in June of 2010.

We barely kept the page alive over its past few months, and the last moderator with the keys to the compound had exhausted all reasonable options to continue the site when he closed it down.

In the end we were just not able to generate enough of a workforce to manage the mail and content, and to do the page in the way that we think it deserved to be done.

We have tremendous regrets about closing down, but we no longer felt that we were responsible enough to carry on what "The Professor" started out to do in November of 2005.

Without sounding too much like complete and utter doofuses, we have been honored to have been able to provide a place where so many modern proffies have worked out the angst and ennui of their academic careers.

Those of us who have worked the page feel a sincere closeness to many of you, longtime writers and readers who have opened their hearts and minds to us. We thank you so much for your trust and collegiality.

But we are no longer active; we are no longer accepting submissions. We've left a pared down version of the voluminous and scandalous archives to the right. 1000 of the original 4000 posts are still available to be read, admired, and wondered at.

A good number of former readers ran a blog for six years called College Misery. It was a terrific site with more than 6000 valuable posts and 70,000 comments.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

An article titled "The Short, Brave Life of RateYourStudents.com" appeared in December 2010 on the Chronicle of Higher Education website. It was written by the last standing moderator of the page, and it does a good job of capturing what RYS was all about.

While this site is no longer active, we have left about 1000 of the old posts up for archival reasons. You should browse the sidebar, or just start with the most recent Ring of DistinKtion, for some favorite posts from 5 years of angst and ennui.

We, of course, are still relaxing, still drunk, and still wondering where Walt is.

In the Beginning...

...there was Rate Your Students. Begun in 2005, the original profane and irreverent academic water cooler bubbled mightily until 2010, the last three years under the moderation of Compound Calico. In the middle of 2010 Cal passed the mantel to Fab Sun, who started College Misery, which is putting the heat on the academy and celebrating the misery we all face.